


Outside the Lines

by irrelevant



Series: imperfect construct [2]
Category: Batman Beyond, DCU, DCU Animated
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Wishful Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-13
Updated: 2010-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Settling isn't her style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside the Lines

**Author's Note:**

> The Batman Beyond writers could have done so much more for Max. Then again, they could have done so much more, period. Still, I miss my show.

She's in the air, throwing herself from ring set to trapeze to jumpline to the next dangling whatever, flying the old fashioned way. The _best_ way. Training sucks, like, eighty percent of the time, but this part she loves. Sometimes she feels like she could do it forever, or at least until it's time to hit the skyline and kick some Jokerz butt.

Last line, one more set of rings. She swings, gets the feel of her momentum, flips herself up and around and dives for the uneven bars. Twice around the highest, propelled by nothing but inertia and her own strength. In and down and back up and launched, tumbled free and… yeesh, her landing needs massive work. Three points is great when you're talking mechanized aerodynamics but when you're, metaphorically speaking, flying without a net, one point is golden.

She pushes herself up, panting, and catches Terry's eye—he's working the free weights and watching Max Live. He grins, lots and lots of teeth, and she snarls: "Forget it. Still not Robin."

"Hey, I've seen those old image files."

If she had Superman's eyes he'd be a puddle. "You hit your head again, McGinnis? Seeing all the pretty red and green and gold spots? Because I don't _think_ so."

"Good call. Try door number two."

She was halfway expecting the voice, but it's the wrong one. Not the old man—not _their_ old man, anyway. She turns to get a look at the uninvited wings flapping around Bruce's belfry, and mister mystery is… wow. Way more than okay for a guy who has to be at least fifty years her senior.

"Mr. Grayson?" And that absolutely is _Terry_ asking instead of telling, and yeah, Max knows who she's looking at.

He's not looking back. "I told you not to call me that. A thousand years later, Mr. Grayson is still my dad," he says to Terry, and his smile is this side of self-mockery, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

She's not sure whether to genuflect or ask for his comm code. Then her brain catches up to his opening line and… "You're kidding."

He's leaning against solid rock, arms crossed, no cane, and he's like some human extension of the rock. He looks away from Terry and meets her eyes and the smile just keeps growing and _changing_, and again: wow.

"You're not kidding," she says blankly, and sits down.

The mats keep her tailbone from splintering, bless Bruce's crotchety, anal soul. She gropes for her towel—she's disgusting chalky sweat all over—and Dick Grayson sits down next to her and tosses it into her lap.

"Do you even have bones?" she says, wiping her face and watching him fold his legs up. He laughs, brief and sharp.

"When the weather's right I feel every single one of them." His hair is salt and pepper. His eyes are too blue for anyone's comfort, and his mouth is pure sex. "If you're lucky, you'll be around long enough to have the same problem."

And okay. So did not need that thought.

"Your dismount needs something."

No shit. "Did you come all the way here to tell me that?"

"Partly," he says, and her stomach does something between a flip and a lurch.

She stares at him because she has to, and this time his smile is all edge.

"First time Bruce has called me without Babs holding a taser on him in over twenty years. You must be something else."

"She is," Terry says, and she wants to grab him and kiss him for the surety in his voice and on his face. He knows what she's worth, and for him it's not about her physical and mental potential.

He's standing over them, hands shoved in the pockets of his track pants, and the look on his face says that even though Dick is part of his personal pantheon, he'll still kick his ass if he screws with her. And she has a sister and a mother, and sometimes even a father, but she didn't know what family or home _meant_ before Terry and Bruce and this place.

Dick's smile says he gets that. It says he understands.

Terry's fuck you half-grin is front and center, and he's looking kind of Bruce-ish around the jaw line. "So. We're good?"

"I guess we'll have to be," Dick says. He holds out his hand and Terry hauls him to his feet, then holds on a little longer than necessary. To Dick's credit, he doesn't flinch. Max thinks he must have one hell of a grip himself. Bruce does and he's pushing ninety.

And they're still staring and the smiles are looking more like snarls, and it's a good thing she doesn't need anyone to help her up, thank you _very_ much. "I love the smell of testosterone in the evening. Slag it, McGinnis. You're the big bad bat and this is your cave, we got that."

She punches him in the arm—not too hard, they had a run in with a splicer pack last night and they're both still feeling it—and his smile is the one he saves for her and Dana and sometimes his kid brother.

"Go take a shower already so the man can beat me up in peace," she says, glancing at Dick. He's watching them but she can't read his expression. Which could be either a good or bad thing, depending. It's hard to tell with Bats. She wonders if that'll ever apply to her. Maybe it already does.

"You sure?" Terry is still hovering. She rolls her eyes.

"You weren't this sketchy when Queen Bitch was whaling on me. I'm cool. Go."

"Schway." And that is _really_ not a smile anymore. "Think I'll go talk to Bruce about letting people wander down here without warning me first."

Dick lifts an eyebrow, and Max is suddenly, acutely aware that Bruce Wayne raised this man. He says, "Who says he knows I'm here?" before he strolls over to the mainframe and starts playing with the central control console.

Terry narrows his eyes at Dick's back, mutters, "Freak." Max elbows him in the gut and jerks her thumb at the stairs.

He gives her a fake hurt look and an even faker damaged-for-life abdomen clutch. She mouths, "Not even," and raises _both_ eyebrows.

"All right, I'm going," and he is, footsteps echoing longer and farther away until Ace barks once, as close as he gets to welcoming. The clock snicks shut on Terry's laughter.

"Do you seriously think Bruce doesn't know every time a spider twitches within twenty miles of this place?" she asks, because she kind of wants to know. Dick makes a small, amused sound.

"I like messing with the kid. He's easy."

Sometimes her life feels like one long eye-roll. "You gonna clue me in anytime soon, or should I just go ahead and guess?"

Another one of those sounds. "I'm not the Riddler, and you said it yourself. You're not Robin." He presses a sequence of keys and onscreen something begins to take shape. Max makes a mental note to search the database for Riddler references after he leaves.

"Consider this a design prototype," he says without turning around. "I'll ask for input before production, but this as good as it gets for now. Which is pretty good given that it's my design instead of Bruce's."

He grins at her over his shoulder and she swallows, hard. Has to move closer, because the projected visual is fully integrated 3D now, and she can--she can _see_. "That isn't… yours."

"Newer model, same MO." She hears every single one of the five billion things he isn't saying.

She doesn't have a suit yet, not a real one with an inbuilt identity. The one she's been wearing is a lot like Terry's, made to her specs (Bruce wouldn't let her out of the Cave, otherwise) only it's unmarked black, with a domino instead of a cowl.

The domino she likes. It's different from anything any of the Bats have ever worn; fancier, like sharpened spikes heat-curved into dangerous new shapes.

Bruce made her exploding shuriken to match. She thinks she'll keep them. And the domino. It, and they, feel like they're hers.

The suit itself…

She looks at the solid-seeming image floating in front of the screen and everything in her speeds up and goes completely still at the same time. Because she's been temp coloring her hair electric blue every night before she goes out, spiking the hell out of it for good measure. And now.

Soon.

She'll be blue in other places. Important places.

Dick's hand is weight and history and somehow more real on her shoulder than anything else in her life up until this moment has been.

"Just so you know," he says, "I'm going to make you hate me a lot for a while."

Heh. "At least you're warning me. Bruce didn't."

"There isn't a warning in the multiverse strong enough to cover Bruce." And that is so _very_ freaking true. "Are you—" He stops, cutting himself off and looking like he's rethinking a few things.

"Am I what?" Because damned if she's not going to hear the rest.

He's… studying her. She tells herself to get used to it. He's going to be doing a lot of that, if the old vid footage is anything to go by. A lot of other things as well. She foresees a world of pain in her future.

His arms are crossed again—it's like his default pose or something—and he tilts his head slightly to one side and says, "Are you sure?"

She snorts. "Wonder if the old man asked Terry that. Is it the girl thing? Because if it is I may have to hurt you."

He's laughing, obviously at himself not her, and his eyes… god, he could be her _grandfather_, but Jesus, he's beautiful. "You've met Barbara, right?"

"Hmn." She makes it noncommittal because he deserves it. The laughter trails off into a lopsided grin.

"Tim used to sleep with a batarang. The first month after Bruce finally let him out on the street, we practically had to pry him out of the suit if we wanted it off."

She looks back up at the projection. It's not an exact match for the original. The stylized bird is gone, replaced by hard angles and thick lines that ride the shoulders all the way down to two fingers of each hand. The rest is a match for Terry's in most ways aside from the missing cowl and the blue-lined wings that look more feathered than webbed. But, maybe because the original was more like Terry's suit than any of the others in the Case, she can see Dick in it, easily. She can see herself.

She says, "I want this," and hopes it's enough. She thinks it is. His hand is back on her shoulder.

He says, "I know," and yeah. He would.

No one better.


End file.
